It’s the sign of a well made movie when we can watch it without thinking about the fact it’s just an actor on screen reading lines. Sometimes, though, there’s stuff that happens behind the lens that completely changes how you see a given scene. For example, did you know that…
5. RoboCop blew away all those drug dealers listening to a soft rock ballad
The film RoboCop follows the journey of an invincible sentinel of justice and righteous robotic backhands on his journey to discover what it means to be a man and solve his own murder. In one of the movie’s most awesome scenes, RoboCop casually walks into a drug lab and proceeds to shoot, like, 100 guys in the dong with his wicked-awesome auto pistol. There hasn’t been a more one-sided fight scene since Ryu got into a fist-fight with that car in Street Fighter 2 and throughout the whole thing, RoboCop never once seems challenged. Which may have something to do with the fact he was grooving to the dulcet tones of Peter Gabriel the entire time.
You see, the actor who played RoboCop, Peter Weller, admitted in an interview that during that scene, to drown out the sound of all the gunfire, he was actually listening to a walkman hidden below the suit’s helmet. That walkman was, according to Weller, playing nothing but Peter Gabriel’s Red Rain on repeat the entire time.
4. Grand Moff Tarkin was wearing a pair of fuzzy pink slippers when he detonated Alderaan
Prior to being resurrected and becoming a permanent resident of the Uncanny Valley in Rogue One, Peter Cushing was best known for his role as Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope. Throughout that film, Tarkin establishes himself as a ruthlessly efficient leader and a bit of a dick, what with the whole “committing global genocide” thing he does just to prove a point.
If you watch the scenes Cushing appears in (in the original trilogy), you may notice that he’s only ever really shown from the waist up. This is because for virtually every scene he appeared in, Cushing was wearing a pair of fuzzy pink slippers while portraying Tarkin. Reportedly, because the boots he was given to wear didn’t fit. This means that Grand Moff Tarkin was such a badass that nobody, including Darth Vader, had the balls to call him on not wearing his uniform while he detonated Alderaan.
3. Christopher Reeve’s Superman had a big metal dong
To many people, Christopher Reeve is and always will be Superman, and his portrayal of the Man of Tomorrow is consistently voted one of the greatest interpretations of the character ever. Something that’s made all the more amusing when you realize that for every scene he appeared in as Superman, Reeve’s dong was being cupped by a big metal codpiece.
This is because the costume designer and producers for the various Superman movies couldn’t agree on one rather unusual issue: how big Superman’s penis should be. This argument raged back and forth until it was agreed that Reeve would wear a metal codpiece to give his package an aesthetically pleasing, but not distracting shape. Reeve apparently hated wearing the codpiece, especially because the actress who played Lois Lane would flick it between takes, as she liked the silly metallic twang it made. In other words, when you watch those old Superman movies, the reason Superman’s bulge never moves is because it’s made of metal! Gee, no wonder they call him the Man of Steel.
2. Whenever you see the back of Carl’s head in The Walking Dead, it’s a 29-year-old woman
The character Carl from The Walking Dead has all the personality and charisma of wet flannel wrapped around a stump of wood. He’s annoying, he never really does anything, and his floppy, impeccably coiffed hair breaks all sense of immersion because how does his hair look that well maintained in the apocalypse?
As it turns out, the reason for Carl’s luxurious flowing locks is partly because the actor’s stunt double is of the female persuasion. Yep, pretty much any time you see Carl from the back, he’s being played not by a teenage actor who grew out of his cute phase five seasons ago, but a seasoned female stunt actress who can do cool front flips. Which makes us wonder: why not just cast her as Carl? They already strayed from the comics by adding Daryl to the story, and everyone loved that. Why not double down by making Carl a girl, and have her drop-kick zombies into next week in every other scene? Don’t tell us you wouldn’t find that awesome because we only just thought of it and are already considering starting a petition on Change.org to make it happen.
1. Jason Voorhees ends most scenes by apologizing to the people he just killed
Jason Voorhees is one of cinema’s most omnipresent and terrifying villains, and he’s probably killed more teenagers with a big knife than most Call of Duty players. Over the years, Jason has been played by a lot of actors, most of whom are closing in on being 7 feet tall… and all of whom are absolute sweethearts.
The most famous of these is probably Kane Hodder, who portrayed the hockey mask loving immortal stab-man during the ’80s. Since retiring the mask, the cast and crew he worked with on those movies have waxed poetic about Kane’s tenure as the villain and his sense of humor when in costume. Things Kane would do to alleviate tension include ending scenes by excitedly disco dancing when he heard the word cut, and staring at members of the public, standing stock still between takes, to freak them out before walking over to shake their hand.
Another man famous for wearing the mask, Derek Mears, was similarly light-hearted when playing cinema’s most famous machete wielding murder, going out of his way to comfort actors he worked with and apologize for hurting them during scenes he was pretending to violently murder them in. So yeah, the next time you watch a movie with Jason Voorhees in it, there’s a fairly good chance the actor playing him ended whatever scene you’re watching by breaking it just all the way down and throwing out his best dance moves.
2 Comments
The Walking Dead isn’t a movie…
Thanks for noticing.